November 2013

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say. Maybe so. It’s just not usually FedEx that is doing the imitating or the flattering. But with its new “simple and predictable” flat rate shipping option, FedEx seems to be trying to look like the U.S. Postal Service in one particular way.

The FedEx One Rate bears more than passing resemblance to the popular Priority Mail Flat Rate, suggesting FedEx is shifting strategy to become more aggressive in the light-weight retail package segment it once largely ceded to the Postal Service.

The generation known as Digital Natives – born and raised in the age of the Internet – are said to live much of their lives online in one way or another. Indeed, while use of email is hardly exclusive to their demographic, it’s no coincidence that their rise has corresponded with the decline of mail volume.

This week the Postal Service announced plans to move into one of the few remaining frontiers of package delivery – Sundays.

Under a new negotiated service agreement approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission, e-tailing giant Amazon.com will use the Postal Service’s Parcel Select service to ship everything from clothing to garden tools on Sundays. The program is running now in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, with a rollout planned in 2014 in Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Phoenix, to name a few.

Number of packages you returned or plan to return post-holidays:

Recent Comments

Thank you for your comments on our 2010 blog. Though we have closed the comment section on this page, the Office of Inspector General is continuously conducting staffing reviews of the Postal Service...

Latest Blog Posts

It’s been said the opioid epidemic does not discriminate. Its impact is felt in all communities — rural or urban, big or small, wealthy or poor. As was noted at a recent Senate hearing, nearly every American has been touched in some way by this crisis.

Latest Audit Asks

The U.S. Postal Service has 100 Flats Sequencing System (FSS) machines nationwide, with 18 in the Capital Metro Area. FSS machines were designed to sort flat-sized mail, which includes large envelopes, newspapers, catalogs, circulars, and magazines, into delivery point sequence (DPS) to...

Comments Wanted

We encourage you to visit our blog, which has a new topic for discussion every Monday. You can also give us your thoughts and opinions about upcoming audits on our Audit Asks page. Please refer to our comment policy for further information.